Little Sn0w
by Kuga Sterling
Summary: There's a new member of the Felt, and Slick isn't too pleased about it. News is the kid's been trained by Sn0wman herself, and has gained the nickname "Little Sn0w". But when Slick decides to check up on this supposed new member, she turns out to be everything he didn't expect.
1. Chapter 1

Tonight was slow. If there was one thing that Slick hated, it was slow nights. On slow nights, Boxcars would get out his fucking weird-as-shit heart porn or whatever it was and giggle like an idiot in a corner. On slow nights, Droog would be even more of an insufferable asshole, in that irritating, silently-judging-you kind of way that he had. On slow nights, Deuce would just be…well, Deuce was a general fuck-up no matter what the speed of the night.

Droog had once suggested that it wasn't that everyone else got more aggravating on slow nights, but it was that Slick just got a thousand times more irritable on slow nights. Slick resented that suggestion.

Thing is, this slow night was worse than all the other slow nights Slick had ever experienced, because this was the fifth in a series of slow nights. And that was five too many in a row for anybody.

Normally, those roaches that called themselves the Felt would have disrupted their peace and quiet and sped the night up pretty damn fast. But there hadn't been ugly green hide or shameful horse shitting hair of them for _a whole fucking week._ It made Slick suspicious and even more irritable than he'd be on any other slow night. And more than that, it made him impossibly, intolerably, and uncontrollably _bored. _If something didn't happen, and happen soon, Slick was going to go topsy-turvy.

"Hey, um, boss," a small, low-to-the-ground voice piped up. Slick took a break from repetitively stabbing the wall and gave Deuce the most fear-inducing glare he could muster at this level of boredom. Deuce flinched for a second, but quickly recovered and held out what appeared to be a newspaper. "I thought you'd want to see this, boss."

Slick snatched it away, quickly making sure it wasn't one of Droog's private reading materials. And with that look, Slick saw the most infuriating headline he ever had the displeasure of reading: THE FELT STRIKES AGAIN; MIDNIGHT CREW STRANGELY INACTIVE. A quick run-over of the following article indicated that in the five days the Crew had been waiting for the Felt to stage some sort of ambush, they'd been busy wreaking havoc on the town. Robberies, hold-ups, vandalisms….The list went on and on. With a enraged snarl, Slick jerked his knife from the wall and used it to shred the newspaper, until confetti-like strips littered the floor around his feet.

"How could I not know about this?" Slick raged, beginning to pace back and forth. "I mean, we're the fucking Midnight Crew! This makes us look like a bunch of losers and ding-bats. Like the Felt's washed their hands of us. Last week's news!" With another snarl, he hurled his knife at the wall, lodging it firmly in the crumbling concrete. Deuce jumped, surreptitiously scuttling to the other side of the table. Slick was pretty unpredictable when he was truly pissed off.

Droog, who had been sitting calmly at the table with his legs crossed and his feet up, straightened and leaned forward. "They got other things goin' on, Slick," he said. "Wonder if you saw. News says they got a mysterious new member. She's been getting a reputation for herself." Slick glared at Droog, baring his teeth in frustration. Was that lump of shit saying that he knew about this and hadn't told anybody anything? Slick woulda liked to put some metal through that secret-keeping throat, but- "People have been callin her 'Little Sn0w.'"

Slick's rage skipped for an instant, just long enough for the idea to sink in. "What the hell kind of name is 'Little Sn0w'?" he snapped. Droog shrugged.

"I'd guess that it's because Sn0wman herself trained the new kid," he inferred. Slick's eyes twitched, trying to comprehend what this meant. Another member of the Felt, trained by Sn0wman. Another cold, crafty bitch, taught in the ways of snarkiness by the queen of horse shit herself. It was a fucking nightmare.

Slick stalked over to his knife, still stuck in the wall. Once again, he viciously tore it from the cement, a few crumbs of old concrete falling to the ground. As carefully as his temper would allow, he checked the edge. Despite the abuse it took, the edges were still deadly. However, it'd need to be sharpened soon if it was going to retain murder-quality danger levels. And Slick knew just whose carapace he wanted to sharpen it on.

Slick turned to the rest of the Crew, who were watching him warily. Well, Droog and Deuce were watching; Slick was pretty sure Boxcars, who was still immersed in his disgusting personal reading material, had missed the entire episode. That aside, Slick tucked his knife into his suit, hiding it in its accustomed, easy-to-reach sheath.

"I think it's time we paid the Felt a friendly visit, boys," he said, just barely keeping his voice at a calm, cool volume. "We oughta give that new member a real Midnight Crew welcome."


	2. Chapter 2

The night was cool, the air as still as death. Good thing, too, because Slick thought that even the slightest breeze lifting his hat the wrong way might set him off. And for this, he needed to be calm, or, at the very least, in control. The ugly green roof of the Felt mansion was just visible over the dark skyline of the city, stoking Slick's rage and making him snarl almost involuntarily.

Deuce scuttled up towards Slick. "Boss, what're we going to do when we get there?" he asked, obviously eager to be on some sort of mission again. The kid may not have been the brightest, but Slick admired his loyalty.

"When we get there, we're gonna show them damn green shitbags that the Crew's still a force to be reckoned with," Slick hissed. He patted the knife just inside his jacket, as though to make sure it was still there. Hell, with all the time shenanigans the Felt tended to pull, it would be nuts of him not to check up on his stuff every once in awhile. Satisfied his knife was still where it was meant to be, Slick continued on through the dark streets. He turned a corner on the well-known back path to the Felt mansion, and-

BAM. Something solid and none-too-gentle slammed forcefully into his face, knocking him back a few steps. Suddenly, he was in a good ol' fashioned brawl; it seemed that the very damn green shitbags he'd been on his way to pummel had met him halfway. The moment he was able to see past the stars in front of his eyes, he was able to make out the unwelcome visages of Cans, Matchsticks, and Crowbar, the last of whom had bashed his ever-present weapon into Slick's face, initiating the brawl. Slick grasped for his knife, employing it as quickly as possible. He was proud to nick Matchsticks several times, and deflect Crowbar's vicious swings more than once. The rest of the crew were without a doubt making their own marks on the Felt muscle that'd come to bust them up, but Slick wasn't watching them. All he wanted to concentrate on was making as many punctures and slices in these assholes as he could. Crowbar's weapon slammed once again into Slick's skull, causing him to collide with the brick wall of some nondescript building. The double impacts ricocheted inside his head painfully, and for a moment he thought the echoing bang that flooded his ears was due to the injury he'd just been dealt.

However, when his knife went sailing forcefully out of his hand, it became pretty clear that he was sadly mistaken.

The action had come to a standstill, the attention of both sides attracted to a trail of gun smoke spiraling out of the darkness. Slick only knew one woman who could so easily cease the fighting in any room. He gritted his teeth, bracing himself to come face-to-face once again with the one person he hated more than anyone else.

"Be gentle, Crow. We only want to greet them, right?" a decidedly feminine voice floated out of the dark. Slick's eyes narrowed in suspicion.

This voice wasn't the one that he'd been expecting.

Slowly, a figure stalked out of the darkness. At first, she seemed disfigured, large and lumpy. But as she continued forward, more features became visible. What had seemed like large, misshapen shoulders at first was a fluffy off-white fur coat, drifting almost to the ground and completely encompassing the approaching stranger. A wide-brimmed hat sat atop her head, looking strikingly familiar but for one feature: it was a bright pink instead of the black Slick was used to. The brim covered the stranger's face, obscuring her facial features in shadow. She carried a gun that seemed bigger than she was confidently in her black-gloved hands, as though she were certain of her ability to use it. And from the way she'd shot Slick's knife out of his hands, that certainty wasn't just common vanity.

Stopping just short of being fully revealed, she let out a short, soft laugh. "It's been awhile, hasn't it, Spades Slick?" she said, her voice betraying genuine recognition. Slick fumed. Who the hell was this bitch and how the fuck did she know him? He wracked his brain, the faintest traces of recognition flitting just out of reach.

"Who the hell are you?" he demanded, drawing his spare knife from his shoe. A real Crew member always kept at least five knives on them, like a sensible person, and Slick was sensible as hell.

The stranger lifted her head, meeting Slick's narrowed eyes. A smile curved her lips, and the light gleamed off a carapace as white as snow itself. One shiny black eye dropped a lazy wink at him. "Oh come on, Slick, like you could ever forget," she said, her voice staying calm but betraying just the slightest hint of disappointment.

But oh, did Slick ever remember. While the rest of the Crew tried figuring out why the hell the Felt would recruit a whiteshell, Slick's own mind was being flooded with memories that seemed so long ago, but were all too real and close now. And though with the sight of her face, Slick could remember, he was having a much harder time believing. He just couldn't reconcile his memory of a sweet, eager-to-help whiteshell with this gun-toting bombshell in a fur coat. What had changed about her? Had something happened? Slick was starting to over think things, and if there was one thing that really turned his mood sour it was over thinking things.

"Ms. Paint," he growled, doing his best to keep his confusion out of his voice. "What the hell are you doing here? And with these assholes, of all the people in this hellhole?"

"I've been going by Little Sn0w, in case you haven't heard, Slick," she quickly corrected him. She adjusted her hat on her head, smiling proudly. "And I just thought you'd want to catch up a little."

Slick's jaw dropped. "Y-you?! Little Sn0w?" he spluttered. He snarled at her, enraged. "Then the last thing I wanna do with you is 'catch up'. Anybody who calls themselves Sn0wman's friend had better watch their back, 'cuz I'll be stickin' a knife it in sometime soon."

Ms. Paint shook her head patronizingly. "That's too bad, Slick. Remember the good times we had? But I guess those are behind us now." She nodded at the Felt members, who immediately disentangled themselves from the scene and went to her side. Next to the muscle of the Felt, she looked so tiny, but with a deadly sort of power that shocked Slick; Sn0wman had made Ms. Paint into her near double. She waved a hand in a short, dismissing gesture. "Stopping by the mansion tonight would be a bad idea, Slick," she warned, "but I'll be seeing you around soon. Have a good night boys, you hear?"

With that, she and the Felt members who had accompanied her disappeared into the dark, leaving a befuddled Crew all looking to a fuming Slick for answers. Droog watched their leader carefully; he had a rudimentary knowledge of who Ms. Paint was to Slick, but Slick was unpredictable at the best of times.

Finally Deuce crept up to Slick's side, his curiosity getting the best of him. "Hey, Boss, what're we gonna do about her?" he asked, deciding to forgo asking who the pretty Prospitian was.

Slick walked carefully over and picked his knife up from the ground. There was a good-sized dent in the handle where Ms. Paint's bullet had hit it, and he internally cursed. He tucked it away anyway, never one to throw away a knife. He nodded, mostly to himself.

"Well, it looks like we're going to have to make her a member."


	3. Chapter 3

The Felt mansion was absolutely enormous; at least, it had been when Ms. Paint had first arrived. The entire thing, from the obnoxious green exterior to the ridiculous number of incessantly ticking clocks within, had intimidated her. But these days, Ms. Paint walked confidently through the doors of the mansion, the Felt's muscle trailing behind her as though they were her personal bodyguards. Not that she needed bodyguards anymore.

Cans and Matchsticks disappeared to their respective rooms right away, Crowbar giving Ms. Paint an approving nod before he did the same. With a self-satisfied smile, Ms. Paint put her gun away in the hidden weapons closet close to the door and shed her huge fur coat, revealing one of her favorite dresses: a sparkling silver one, just a few shades darker than her own pearly white carapace. She would have liked for Slick to see her in it; unfortunately, their encounter had been too brief, and it seemed like he didn't remember as much about her as she would have preferred.

Ms. Paint ghosted through the corridors of the mansion, habitually checking the time whenever she passed a clock, which was almost constantly. She'd always been a pretty punctual person, but with one thousand clocks to keep her company, she was _never_ late.

She finally came across the door she was looking for, labeled with a curvy black 8. She knocked confidently on the door, listening closely. From within, a low, smoky voice called, "Come on in, Little Sn0w."

Ms. Paint turned the knob and opened the door slowly, peeking in at her mentor. Sn0wman was sitting comfortably on the edge of her queen-sized bed, her long legs crossed and a hazy film of smoke floating above her head. She offered Ms. Paint the small, almost sarcastic smile that meant she was glad to see someone.

"So, how'd it go?" she asked, beckoning Ms. Paint in further. Once afraid of the intimidating Dersite woman, Ms. Paint now was able to comfortably stroll up to Sn0w and sit beside her. She kicked her feet a bit, her legs not quite reaching all the way to the floor.

"He…didn't seem to remember me too well," she admitted. Her eyes didn't meet Sn0w's, though she could feel the questioning glance that had been turned her way. "I mean…well, he remembered me, but not all that fondly." Her voice got quieter as she muttered the last part. "He said he'd stick a knife in whoever called themselves your friend."

Sn0wman let out a bark of laughter that startled Ms. Paint into looking at her mentor in confusion. How was that even remotely funny? Ms. Paint had truly hoped that Slick would remember her as fondly as she remembered him…though, if she were being honest with herself, she wouldn't have expected her encounter with him to go any differently.

"That sounds like Slick," Sn0wman laughed, putting an arm around Ms. Paint's shoulders. "You see, Little Sn0w, Slick is always trying to get everyone to think all he wants to do is kill people." She thought for a moment, then added, "Sometimes, all he _does_ want to do is kill people. But sweetie, I'll tell you right now he isn't worth worrying over. We have bigger fish to fry than Spades Slick and his silly little Crew. You meeting them was just to keep them off the trail, and if I know Slick, you did a pretty damn good job."

Ms. Paint allowed herself to smile at the compliment, but deep down she was thinking about the time she'd first met Slick. Back then, he'd just been an injured Dersite; someone for her to help. It'd soon grown into much more than that for her, but if she was going to help Sn0wman, the carapacian who'd taught her how to protect herself, she was going to have to suppress any feelings she still had about Slick. Whether she wanted to ignore those feelings was a completely different matter.

"Thanks, Sn0w," Ms. Paint said softly. Sn0wman nodded and patted Ms. Paint's shoulder, taking a drag on her cigarette.

"Of course, Paint," Sn0wman replied easily, breathing out the smoke in long, languid puffs. She stood, signaling that their little meeting was over. She smiled at Ms. Paint again, this time a little softer and more genuine. "Hey, Little Sn0w, I know how you feel, believe me. But trust me when I say that Spades Slick isn't the only fish in this cesspool of an ocean. You can do much better."

Ms. Paint just nodded again. Sn0wman was right; she was almost always right. And anyway, she had known Slick so long ago...and it wasn't as though _he_ was the one who had taken her in, taught her how to defend herself in this violent world, gave her something to do with her life. That title belonged to Sn0wman, and Ms. Paint had every intention of helping Sn0wman with her designs as best as she could, red feelings notwithstanding.

She hopped off the bed with a smile, chirping a short "good night" at Sn0w. As she wandered down the hall to her own room, she tried to imagine what Slick was doing now. A smile formed on her face; whatever he was doing, no doubt it was angry and consuming all of his time and attention.

That tendency was something she loved about him.


	4. Chapter 4

Slick was angry, and it was consuming all his time and attention.

Usually, sharpening his vast collection of knives managed to calm him down, but now even the quiet _shik shik_ of the blade grated on his ears, jumbling his already erratic thoughts and irritating his already raw nerves. One blade sharpened to a fantastically deadly edge, he tossed it aside and picked up another less sharp but no less deadly knife and began scraping at it in frustration. The other members watched him warily; Slick expressed all emotions with varying intensities of agitation, so it was hard to tell what he was feeling at any given moment.

All Slick could think was that had been _Ms. Paint,_ goddamned Ms. Paint, who he had sworn would never hurt a fly. The scraping sound of metal seemed to get quieter as a memory pulled him back, a memory of a time before he'd been leader of the Crew, before he'd acquired his hat, or even his scottie dogs. Back when he was just a traitor out of the job, and just starting with this whole gangster bit.

Injuries had been common and help had been scarce. But, bleeding out on an empty street somewhere, suffering from injuries he could hardly remember specifically anymore, a small voice had crawled through the blood clotting his auditory ducts and said, "Oh my, oh, are you all right? Of course you aren't. Here." Then someone was helping him up, hanging him like a limp doll on her surprisingly strong shoulders. As she'd dragged him through the street and to a small apartment building, ignoring the accusing stares of other carapacians, she'd explained that her name was Ms. Paint, and that she had some medical knowledge and might be able to help him. At the very least, she could provide him with good food and shelter until he healed. Slick had been too tired to argue, and he wasn't inclined to refuse shelter anyway.

Once in the apartment building, she'd laid him as gently as possible on an uncomfortable couch and immediately hurried off to procure him some good soup. She was mumbling something about fixing up the chill that he'd managed to get, though he didn't notice he was shivering at all until she mentioned it. He commanded himself to stop that pansy-ass shivering at once, but it seemed he was far too cold to be commanding anything.

Soon he was bundled up in brightly-colored blankets that reminded him sickeningly of his previous uniform, but he didn't say anything because he was too busy shoveling soup into his mouth. Ms. Paint was going on about how she'd been out of the job since her queen had left to answer a higher calling, and how she'd been looking for work but there wasn't much place for a maid when the whole world was turning into a wasteland. Slick didn't really listen.

He'd wanted to leave right away, but she insisted that he stay, at least until he was healed enough to make his way to the door without falling over. He had to admit, that was probably an appropriate course of action.

As it turned out, it had taken a few weeks for him to heal completely. Or, more accurately, it had taken a few weeks for him to finally pack himself up and leave. He'd lingered for reasons he couldn't exactly put a finger on. Maybe it was because Ms. Paint was cheery and kind even in the face of his most caustic tempers, and knew the difference between an irritated "fuck off" and an affectionate "fuck off." Even when he'd gotten himself out of the apartment, he always found himself wandering back, where a hot meal and a warm, if uncomfortable, couch was always waiting for him. Not to mention a heartfelt "I missed you, Slick!" and a smile that could brighten up even the dark streets of the slum-like city.

When he'd finally left for good, he'd had his hat and his dogs, some of them gummy snacks and some of them dangerous thugs. The life of a gangster was dangerous, and there weren't many he cared for enough to keep them from it. Ms. Paint was one of the few, maybe the only one, who he just felt he couldn't involve in the mess of bullets, knives, and blood that was his chosen lifestyle. Ms. Paint had accepted that graciously, though he could hear a waver in her voice. But he ignored it and walked out of her life once and for all; or, at least, he'd thought he had.

His reverie faded away, the soft hiss of scraping metal growing louder once again. He glanced at the knife, looking it over. He deemed it sharp enough, and tossed it aside.

Before he could pick another up, Droog stepped up. "Listen, boss," he said, his voice calculating, "what did you mean before, about making Little Sn0w 'a member'?"

Slick glared at Droog for a moment, then took in the curious faces of Boxcars and Deuce. "I meant exactly what I said," he huffed. "She's apparently good with a gun and has the same kind of training that Sn0w has. She could be an asset like we've never had before." He said this last part with a little bit of venom, making Deuce wince. Boxcars didn't catch it.

Droog kept his eyes on Slick for a moment longer, as though giving Slick the chance to fess up, admit that practicality wasn't the only thing driving his decision to attempt taking a member of the Felt. But Slick just glared at him defiantly, daring Droog to call him out on it.

Droog sighed, giving up on forcing Slick's ulterior motives into the open. "How do you think you're gonna take a member of the Felt away from them? They're a pretty tight bunch," he asked.

Slick stood up and dusted off his jacket. He picked up a knife and tucked it away, close to his heart. "Paint and I have history," he said simply, moving slowly to the exit. "I'm gonna do this mission alone."

None of the Crew stopped or followed him as he disappeared into the dark.


End file.
